Collateral Consequences Research Articles

Policing mandatory bicycle helmet laws in NSW: Fair cop or unjust gouge?

Australia was the first country to introduce laws mandating the wearing of helmets by bicyclists with the aim of enhancing road safety for cyclists. Examining the law and its administration in NSW, we point to some serious problems and anomalies with the law. We argue safety concerns have been relegated and the fine for the offence has lost any sense of proportionality with offending, parity with penalties imposed in other states and with penalties for other road safety offences in NSW. We also discuss concern over potential police misuse of the law and of its collateral consequences for the vulnerable.

Conceptual and empirical obstacles in defining MS‐13

Research SummaryPast and present gang scholarship is marked by debate as to the appropriate criteria for defining gangs and gang membership. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS‐13, highlights some obstacles in conceptualizing gangs and operationalizing gang membership. Although MS‐13 has generated attention in recent years, little systematic criminological research exists on the gang. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and surveys of law‐enforcement gang experts, we link long‐standing issues of gang definition and measurement to MS‐13 in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Policy ImplicationsGang and immigration enforcement are inextricably linked in the case of MS‐13. The ambiguous, contested, and varied means by which gangs are defined and labeled may result in the overpolicing and overcriminalization of young immigrants of color and youth of color in general. Beyond unsubstantiated police stops, arrests, convictions, and gang enhancements, such labeling practices may lead to collateral immigration consequences including deportation and permanent bars to reentry into the United States.

What's After Good?: The Burden of Post-Incarceration Life

In the current era of mass incarceration, an increasing number of people face the challenge of transitioning from prison to society. Researchers of post-incarceration life have produced a detailed account of the collateral consequences of incarceration, noting the numerous barriers people must overcome as they try to return to society. In this paper, we show how stigma continues to be a structuring force in the lives of the formerly incarcerated. We develop the concept of the burden of post-incarceration life, meaning the structural constraints formerly incarcerated people face and the constant work they undertake to demonstrate and attempt to receive recognition for their rehabilitation. We argue that this burden is a critical though understudied aspect of life after prison. To develop this argument, we draw upon ethnographic and qualitative interview data from two distinct research projects with formerly incarcerated men and women in Chicago and highlight three interrelated themes that emerged from our data: judgment, exploitation, and competing demands. By centering burden in our analysis, we conclude that a focus on overcoming barriers may obfuscate the ongoing challenges formerly incarcerated people face.

Beyond the limits of photoperception: constitutively active PHYTOCHROME B2 overexpression as a means of improving fruit nutritional quality in tomato.

SummaryPhotoreceptor engineering has recently emerged as a means for improving agronomically beneficial traits in crop species. Despite the central role played by the red/far‐red photoreceptor phytochromes (PHYs) in controlling fruit physiology, the applicability of PHY engineering for increasing fleshy fruit nutritional content remains poorly exploited. In this study, we demonstrated that the fruit‐specific overexpression of a constitutively active GAF domain Tyr252‐to‐His PHYB2 mutant version (PHYB2Y252H) significantly enhances the accumulation of multiple health‐promoting antioxidants in tomato fruits, without negative collateral consequences on vegetative development. Compared with the native PHYB2 overexpression, PHYB2Y252H‐overexpressing lines exhibited more extensive increments in transcript abundance of genes associated with fruit plastid development, chlorophyll biosynthesis and metabolic pathways responsible for the accumulation of antioxidant compounds. Accordingly, PHYB2Y252H‐overexpressing fruits developed more chloroplasts containing voluminous grana at the green stage and overaccumulated carotenoids, tocopherols, flavonoids and ascorbate in ripe fruits compared with both wild‐type and PHYB2‐overexpressing lines. The impacts of PHYB2 or PHYB2Y252H overexpression on fruit primary metabolism were limited to a slight promotion in lipid biosynthesis and reduction in sugar accumulation. Altogether, these findings indicate that mutation‐based adjustments in PHY properties represent a valuable photobiotechnological tool for tomato biofortification, highlighting the potential of photoreceptor engineering for improving quality traits in fleshy fruits.

Book Review: Beyond punishment? A normative account of the collateral legal consequences of conviction

Book Review: Beyond punishment? A normative account of the collateral legal consequences of conviction

Custody Judgments, Ex‐offender Parents, and Best Interests of the Child

AbstractOne collateral consequence of a criminal conviction for parents with young children is the loss of custody, which turns on the subjective “best interests of the child” standard. This research explored whether criminal conviction and substance abuse history influenced custody decisions. Experiment 1 presented community participants with a vignette describing a parent with combinations of manipulated stigmatized characteristics (i.e., gender, race, offender status, and substance abuse). Participants completed a custody determination scale, which showed that mothers with an offense received more favorable custody decisions than fathers with an offense, as did ex‐offenders without substance abuse. Experiment 2 added a positive or negative psychological fitness evaluation of the ex‐offender. It found main effects of the professional parenting evaluation and replicated the parent's substance abuse findings from Experiment 1, but not the offense status result. Most importantly, these results were significant after controlling for the participants’ ratings of the best interests of the child in question and mediation analyses revealed that the child's best interests only partially explained the relationships between substance abuse, the parental evaluation, and the custody determination. This suggests that participants made custody decisions based on factors extraneous to the current legal standard, namely, the best interests of the child.

Beyond Recidivism: An Outcome Evaluation of A Federal Reentry Court and A Critical Discussion of Outcomes that Matter

Relatively little empirical research has documented reentry courts’ effectiveness. Even less scholarship has critically evaluated their varied goals. A quasi-experimental outcome evaluation of a federal reentry court reveals that the program increases access to social services, decreases probation revocations, and increases future employment. However, the program does not reduce the likelihood of new arrests. These findings are interpreted in the context of the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, a desistance from crime lens, and a human rights perspective.

State variation in the drug felony lifetime ban on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Why the modified ban matters

The drug felony lifetime ban on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) affects thousands of individuals with felony drug convictions in the United States. Federal law allows states to choose to opt out or modify the full ban. Prior research has treated the ban as a binary outcome, characterizing anything but a full ban as a sign of state reform of this harsh collateral consequence. We argue that modified versions of the ban, which simultaneously allow greater access to public aid while also monitoring and sanctioning recipient behavior, have been overlooked but pose important theoretical and empirical challenges to this narrative. To address this gap, we analyze state discretion in the implementation of the drug felony lifetime ban on TANF receipt between 1997 and 2010 utilizing a multilevel multinomial modeling strategy. Results reveal that distinct patterns of state-level factors are associated with each form of the ban, highlighting the need to treat modified bans as unique policy choices in their own right. Our study informs the understanding of state implementation of collateral consequences that straddle both the penal and welfare systems in the United States.

Conceptualizing the effects of imprisonment on families: Collateral consequences, secondary punishment, or symbiotic harms?

This article explores how we might best understand the effects of imprisonment on families and why this is important to a full understanding of prison as a form of punishment. The effects on families have broadly been understood within previous literature in one of two ways: either as ‘collateral consequences’, or as a form of secondary punishment extended to the family member. We suggest that the first of these descriptions is at best insufficient and at worst subordinating and marginalizing, while the second is inaccurate when family members have not committed an offence. We offer instead the concept of ‘symbiotic harms’ which we define as negative effects that flow both ways through the interdependencies of intimate associations such as kin relationships. The characteristics of these harms can be more fully described by a term which encompasses their relational, mutual, non-linear, agentic, and heterogeneous properties.

The pains of being unauthorized in the Netherlands

Ethnographic fieldwork amongst 105 unauthorized migrants in the Netherlands shows that unauthorized migrants suffer from the pains of being unauthorized. These migrants feel punished and are severely hurt by – amongst others – the deprivation of healthy and secure living conditions, social and geographical mobility and citizenship. These migrants’ pains are caused by current restrictive migration controls, something the Dutch authorities could and should be aware of given previous research that provides similar insights. While the Dutch authorities do provide – the legally required – provisions for unauthorized migrants, we argue on the basis of Hayes’ proximity model that these authorities accept the collateral consequences of (possibly) being subjected to migration controls and purposely inflict these pains on unauthorized migrants. This means that migration control is not only experienced as punishment by those subjected to it, but that it is also intended to punish. The current system of migration control has as such expanded the reach of penal power. This implies that ‘punishment and society’ scholarship should also look beyond the borders of nation-states and criminal laws in order to understand contemporary punishment.

The Municipal Pardon Power

At the state and federal levels, the pardon power can be used to restore the dignity and legal rights lost by a criminal conviction. Unfortunately, those facing similar consequences from municipal convictions may not have access to a pardon. Although clemency is exceedingly rare at any level of government, municipal defendants face a unique structural problem that deprives them of the possibility of a pardon. Specifically, many cities have simply failed to create a local clemency power. This Note argues that the authority to grant pardons for municipal offenses is part of the toolbox of powers provided to cities through the doctrine of home rule. Accordingly, cities do not have to wait for the permission of their parent states to create a local clemency power. By failing to advocate for a local interpretation of clemency, cities are missing a valuable opportunity to help municipal defendants overcome the stigma and collateral consequences that accompany municipal convictions. While existing scholarship largely ignores the application of clemency to municipal law, this Note offers a legal framework for reimagining the next frontier of clemency.

Food security in the time of Coronavirus (COVID-19). The Argentine case

The context of pandemic of the human coronavirus COVID-19, preventive strategies based on mandatory social isolation (quarantine) were imposed by governments to reduce transmission in the community. However, they have had a strong impact on the economies of the countries and on the people as massive layoffs, decreased wages, uncertainty, inability to work formally, increasing precariousness and inequality and food insecurity. Without a doubt, the pandemic surprised Argentina without the necessary tools to amortize the attacks of the disease, and all the collateral consequences that emerge from it. The concept of food insecurity represents a situation or a process experienced by households in which there is a limited and uncertain availability of the quantity and quality of food that allow covering the nutritional requirements of people, thus as an also limited and uncertain availability of the ability to acquire them in an acceptable way from a social and cultural perspective. This work addresses household food insecurity at the micro-social level based on their own surveys and describes the strategies carried out by households in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires city, Argentina to withstand the effect. FI status was assessed among 200 adult university students a mean age of 28±6 years (57% female, 43% male) during isolation period in April -May 2020 using the food insecurity experience scale (FIES). The students responded affirmatively and with a higher percentage value to the items related to the lack of money to consume healthy and nutritious food. Food security status of the 200 students survey, 23.5 per cent (n = 47) were food secure. Food insecurity was reported by 76.5% (n = 153). Of these, 50% (n = 100) were mild food insecurity, 25.5% (n = 51) were moderate, while 1% (n = 2) were severe food insecurity. Food insecurity derived from access, as well as the difficulties of finding variety in food at affordable prices due to the obstacles imposed by the isolation affected food security. The changes on food intake during quarantine period was also analysed. In the current particular situation, it is advisable to improve the consumption of fresh food. Meat consumption has also been altered, shifting its consumption to cuts of less economic value. Among the reasons for this change in eating habits during this period, it is possible that the increase in stress, anxiety due to isolation, as well as the economic reasons and those that result from difficulties in accessing points of sale could explain these changes.

The Washington State Second Chance Expungement Gap

Every time a person is convicted of a crime, this event is memorialized in the person’s criminal record in perpetuity, setting off thousands of potential collateral consequences, including being penalized in searches for employment, housing and volunteer opportunities. To remove these harmful consequences, Washington law allows people whose criminal records meet certain conditions to vacate their records. However, the Second Chance Gap in Washington “expungements” - the share of people who aren’t accessing the vacation remedy because of hurdles in the petition process - we suspect is large. To estimate it, we used research and practice expertise to approximately model the eligibility criteria for vacation set forth in the law and applied it to a sample of records obtained through a records request from the Administrative Office of the Courts of Washington. Importantly, data limitations made it impossible for us to consider out of state charges, payment of fines and fees, and sentence completion, so we did not model these eligibility conditions. Based on our analysis, Washington’s vacation laws allow for approximately 60% of those who live burdened with criminal conviction records, or over 1M people, to potentially receive relief. But less than 5% of those eligible for relief, and less than 1% of the charges eligible for relief have received the remedy. At current rates of vacation, we estimate that it would take over 4,000 years to clear the backlog of eligible charges using current, petition-based methods, based on our calculations regarding the number of charges that we estimate are eligible for vacation, and the actual number of charges that were vacated last year (1,973). Existing racial disparities in the Washington criminal justice system are significant: currently, African-Americans represent 4.2% of individuals in Washington but within our sample, Afrian-Americans represented 11% of Washingtonians with a criminal record, 15% of Washingtonians with any felony record, and 22% of Washingtonians with a Class A felony record. Among the population of people with criminal records, Clean Slate would apply evenly and therefore not exacerbate but also, would not narrow racial disparities. However, among the general population, Clean Slate would reduce racial disparities significantly as the differences in the share of African-Americans with a record and share of whites with a record would get considerably smaller. Because of the large second chance gap, the filing of petitions by all those who are entitled to could result in a severe congestion at the courts. Washington can close the 95-99% second chance gap between eligibility and delivery of relief by automating relief, solving both problems, but only if it implements the law with some adjustments and compensates for missing and dirty data.

On the Origins of the Market for Corporate Law

I study the origins of the market for corporate charters and the emergence of Delaware as the leader of this market. Specifically, I assemble new data on 19th and 20th-century corporations to evaluate two widely-held beliefs: (1) the U.S. Supreme Court is responsible for enabling a national market for corporate charters in the 19th century and (2) Delaware became the leader in this market only because New Jersey (the initial leader) repealed its extremely liberal corporate laws in 1913. I argue that both claims are false: The Supreme Court always opposed a national market for corporate charters, and New Jersey’s decline began a decade before its 1913 repeal. It is more likely that the market for corporate charters emerged as a collateral consequence of interstate commerce and that New Jersey declined because Delaware and other states simply copied its laws.

Child removal as thegatewayto further adversity: Birth mother accounts of the immediate and enduring collateral consequences of child removal

This article is focused on the immediate and enduring consequences of child removal, from the perspective of birth mothers. The article builds on the authors’ previous theoretical work on the collateral consequences of child removal and women’s vulnerability to repeat family court appearances. Interview data drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews with 72 birth mothers conducted in seven local authority areas are revisited to enable a focused analysis of the immediate and longer-term effects of child removal. Analysis was informed by phenomenology’s interest in collective accounts of experience and the pursuit of moderate generalisations. All the women participating in the study had experienced the repeat removal of their children through the family courts, or were involved in child protection proceedings concerning an unborn child, having previously lost a child from their care. Birth mothers recounted an immediate psychosocial crisis following child removal, but also the cumulative and enduring nature of problems. From women’s accounts, we have been able to deepen our understanding of the enormity of the recovery challenge for women with long-standing histories of disadvantage who hold fragile and restricted social statuses. Role loss and further exclusionary consequences of child removal were particularly pronounced, given women’s limited access to protective resources. A clear set of recommendations for services are set out in a final discussion. The scale of the difficulties women face needs to be recognised in services that aim to promote recovery, if women are to be helped to avoid recurrent family court proceedings.

The Contemporary Defended Neighborhood: Maintaining Stability and Diversity through Processes of Community Defense

This article extends Suttles’ (1972) theory of the defended neighborhood by applying the framework to a contemporary context and exploring the social processes that residents of a diverse community used to defend their neighborhood from change. Drawing on data from an ethnography of Beverly—a stably diverse, highly efficacious, upper middle–class neighborhood on Chicago's far southwest side—I identify and examine three defensive processes used by residents: cultivating neighbors and a culture of surveillance, demarcating and enforcing boundaries, and the creation of an insider housing market. I show how residents employed these neighborhood defense processes to maintain desirable conditions and stable diversity in their community. Defensive processes, however, also resulted in collateral consequences for Black residents, who experienced more scrutiny and surveillance than did White residents. These findings demonstrate how residents’ defensive processes can promote neighborhood stability, but may also result in the social exclusion of perceived outsiders including their own neighbors.

Suspension, not expungement: Rationalizing misguided policy decisions around cannabis amnesty in Canada

AbstractHundreds of thousands of Canadians continue to carry the burden of convictions for minor possession of cannabis obtained prior to legalization. Despite support for an automatic expungement process to eliminate the collateral consequences of punishment, the Trudeau government opted for a less favourable policy instrument – record suspensions. Drawing from parliamentary debate and committee hearings, the author summarizes the discussion and debate on Bill C‐93 and analyzes this misguided decision using Miljan’s work on policy instrument choice and rationality. The emphasis on bureaucratic rationality specifically resulted in a maintenance of the status quo when it comes to criminal justice policy and an uninspiring approach to cannabis amnesty in Canada.

Harming America: Corporate Crime in a Context of Deregulation

ABSTRACTLike many Republican presidential candidates before him, Donald J. Trump campaigned on a pro-business, anti-regulation platform, and since his election in November 2016, he has directed his administration to move forward with deregulation in many arenas, including consumer financial protections, environmental controls, and workplace safety among others. Past efforts to roll back regulations governing certain industries, such as the savings and loan and the mortgage industries, have had harmful consequences for the general public or for specific interest groups. In this study, we review what the Trump administration has accomplished with regard to deregulation to date. Then, based on past deregulatory fiascos, we theorize the harmful collateral consequences that may result from this most recent swing of the regulatory-deregulatory pendulum.

Do companies pay the price for environmental crimes? Consequences of criminal penalties on corporate offenders

This paper is concerned with the negative collateral consequences monetary sanctions may have on companies that are prosecuted for violating federal environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Companies often claim fines for law violations will force them to lay off employees and possibly go bankrupt. Using the treadmill of crime theoretical lens, we employ a multivariate analysis on a unique data set of 169 companies to determine if their federal prosecutions are associated with negative collateral consequences. We find that some companies, upon being fined, are more likely to experience negative collateral consequences than others.

The New Food Safety

A safe food supply is essential for a healthy society. Our food system is replete with different types of risk, yet food safety is understood as encompassing only foodborne illness and other risks related directly to food ingestion. This Article argues for a more comprehensive definition of food safety, one that includes not just acute, ingestion-related risks, but also whole-diet cumulative ingestion risks, and cradle-to-grave risks of food production and disposal. This broader definition, which we call “Food System Safety,” draws under the header of food safety a variety of historically siloed, and often under-regulated, food system issues including nutrition, environmental protection, and workplace safety. The current approach to food safety is inadequate. First, it contributes to irrational resource allocation among food system risks. Second, it has collateral consequences for nutrition, environmental protection, and workplace safety, and, third, its limited focus can undermine efforts to achieve narrow food safety. A comprehensive understanding of food safety illuminates the complex interactions between narrow food safety and other areas of food system health risks. We argue that such an understanding could facilitate improved allocation of resources and assessment of tradeoffs, and ultimately support better health and safety outcomes for more people. We offer a variety of structural and institutional mechanisms for embedding this approach into agency action.